


Tall Enough, If I Could Stand Straight

by Sookiestark



Series: Fantastic, Frivolous, and Fragile AU's [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:43:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sookiestark/pseuds/Sookiestark
Summary: Willas, Lord of Highgarden, wakes to a rainstorm. Just a glimpse of Willas/Brienne.





	Tall Enough, If I Could Stand Straight

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this originally for Twelve Days of Westerosi Christmas but it did not make the cut. Anyway, I love Brienne and I figured why not ... So here it is.

The Lord of Highgarden wakes late in the night to the sound of rain falling on the thousands of leaves in the gardens. He likes the sound of hundreds of thousands of raindrops falling on the hundreds of thousands of green leaves. His manservant knows to not shut the windows of his rooms when there is a summer rainstorm. Lord Willas loves the sound.

 

He goes out to the balcony to feel the rain fall on his face. To fall one sweet drop at a time. As a child, he, Garlan, and Margaery would run and play outside during the storms. Their Grandmother would laugh from the gallery and say that folks would call them mad to see them in the rain. Willas had not cared what people thought then. He still could not care.

His wife calls sleepily from the bed. “Willas, come out from the rain before you catch your death.”

She sounds gentle, almost loving. Willas takes a towel from the chair and dries his face and hands. Climbing beside her, he touches her stomach gently. Their third child grows large inside her. She is like a fruit almost ready to harvest. Lady Tyrell doesn't like it when he compares her to fruit. She likes it less when he compares her to a rose. 

Willas cannot help it. He was raised in the Reach where chivalry and courtly love are all the fashion. In the beginning, these metaphors fell from his lips like raindrops; silly, uncontrollable poetic raindrops. After all these years, they are still what he says to her in the privacy of their room. “You are a rose,” he whispers, “a rose of iron and steel.” “Whether you wished for it or not, you are Lady Tyrell, my love. We are a garden of roses at Highgarden.” 

She will blush and turn away. She is the mother of his children and still, she will blush like a maiden with his metaphors. He loves her for that blush and so many other reasons.

He asked her to marry him was after the wars, after all the death. Willas had remained in Highgarden throughout the wars, protected, sheltered, like a rose in winter. He had sent the troops with his brother, Garlan, to defend the living.

Willas had never felt as useless in all his life. A man who was no man, a Lord who could not fight. This woman’s arrival had made him feel there might be a purpose to his life. Perhaps, men could still be men, if they did not fight and women could still be women if they did. 

 

The Lady of Highgarden was like no lady that Highgarden had ever known. The Reach was known for its chivalry, its cities, and its beauty. It was the height of learning of fashion, of literature, and the arts, So, the fact that the Lady of Highgarden could outfight and outride her husband was both scandalous and intriguing. Brienne Tyrell, Lady of Highgarden was provocative, a figure of legends. 

He wonders what his Father or Grandmother would think of this. They are both dead now, buried beneath the Sept of Highgarden. His mother cried and begged him to marry a Fossoway, a Hightower, a Redwyne, even a Florent. In desperation, she pulled daughters of landed knights out, but he refused them all. After all, he was the Lord of Highgarden and he could choose his own wife. 

 

He knew people joked about them sometimes. He could care less.

Willas did not know how it happened. She had met him when she came to Highgarden after she saved his brother’s life during the War and brought him home in a wagon. Not Loras, he was already dead. She could not save him, but Garlan. He remembered how Leonette had cried to see him wounded and weak. Leonette was so pregnant and still she climbed in the wagon to kiss her husband. Willas had looked into the knight’s eyes, so beautifully blue. She had spoken, “I am sorry, my lord. I could not save Ser Loras. I tried. I know what he meant to ...” she said. “There was too many. I am sorry.”

Willas smiled and took her hand. He could not say how it happened. Her hands were as big as his, maybe they were bigger. Yet, he knew this woman would be his wife. Lord Tyrell asked her to stay as a guest of his at Highgarden. She had looked at him strangely as if he was teasing her. 

Willas had hesitated, “I only mean, I am grateful. I would like you to rest from the war and your journeys and let House Tyrell show you its gratitude.” 

She had smiled, and he had felt the beat of his blood quicken. 

The first time he kissed her, it was in the gardens at dusk and the sky was the color of fire plums ripe. She had let him kiss her under the roses in the gazebo. 

Brienne had bent down to catch the kiss on her lips. He remembered how tight he had clutched his cane when he felt the press of her lips.

“I am too tall,” she had said apologetically. 

He had spoken, “If I could stand straight, I would be taller than you, my lady.”

 

In the dark, he wraps his arms around her. He never asks her about the War for the Dawn. He never asks her about the rumors that she had been Jaime Lannister’s whore, his lover. He never speaks about the iron hand she kept in her chest. He never asked what had happened if she had loved him or if she had bedded him. It had been the darkest of times. 

Willas doesn’t need to ask. He knows she did love him. Somehow that makes her sweeter to him. She is so strong, but love makes the strongest of people vulnerable. Now, he has her heart and he is her weakness.


End file.
